NGEN-FÜTA WINKUL

Language often has a material, sculpted presence in Díaz’ work.And as with poetry, words are more than faithful carriers of preordained meanings. They seem to have a life of their own.In this installation, we witness letters gently swaying. Taken together, the letters form the names of nine volcanoes in southern Chile, in an area traditionally inhabited by an indigenous people: the Mapuche.The Mapuche are legendary for many reasons. Their social structure, with its lack of hierarchies and communal property, is a riddle to ethnographers. They are also one of the few American tribes to successfully resist the Spanish, who set out to conquer and colonize present-day Chile starting in the mid-16th century. Remarkably, the Mapuche managed to force a treaty from the conquistadores in 1641, guaranteeing their sovereignty as a nation in the eyes of Spain.In the 19th century, after a long struggle, the Mapuche finally were dispossessed by the Chilean state. Migrants from Europe were sent to settle in their former territories, but conflicts between representatives of the Mapuche and Chile’s state bureaucracy are nevertheless ongoing. Most native peoples now live in the big cities but are generally poor, badly-educated and of low social standing.

The electricity in Díaz’s installation not only makes the letters glow, but also stirs the water in the glass tanks, thereby moving the stones floating on the water’s surface. Each of these volcanic stones carries a letter.the work has the character of a monument, both in its title and formal appearance. In Mapupungun – the language spoken by the Mapuche – Ngen-füta winkul means “Spirit of Own Big Hill”. Indeed, the installation remembers and evokes a spiritual presence. Language (the glowing letters) and territory (the volcanic stones) – as well as the Mapuche’s way of inhabiting their world – are connected by the flow or circulating energy.This installation is of course also an unabashedly artificial device. It has no patience for the romanticizing of native peoples and their supposedly “authentic” lifestyles. Instead, it challenges the contemporary viewer to envision his or her own way of inhabiting a possibly disenchanted world.Dedicated to Aurelio Díaz Mesa (1879-1933), writer, journalist and defender of the rights and culture of the native peoples of Chile.